San Francisco is nation’s fourth fittest city

San Franciscans, all that biking to work, dog-walking and vegan-dieting is paying off. You live in the nation’s fourth fittest city.

The city by the bay came in just behind Minneapolis, Minn., the fittest city; Washington, D.C., and Boston, Mass., in the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual “fitness index.”

The ranking system gave points to cities whose populations who reported exercising, having health insurance, and biking, walking or taking public transportation to work. It also rewarded cities for having comparatively lower rates of obesity, smoking, and death rates for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Finally, cities got points for having more dog parks, golf courses and tennis courts per capita.

The San Francisco area — which, in the survey, also included Oakland and Fremont — excelled in all those categories. But it fell short for having a comparatively higher percentage of people of asthma, plus fewer baseball diamonds, park playgrounds, recreation centers and swimming pools per capita.

The health of other California metropolitan areas ranged across the spectrum. Sacramento ranked sixth, San Jose came in 12th, San Diego was 16th and Los Angeles appeared at 38th. At the bottom at No. 50 was Oklahoma City, Okla.